Golfers are always trying to find ways to increase their club head speed. The golf manufacturers would like you to believe that if you simply buy a new driver you're going to start swinging the golf club a lot faster. However, to truly increase your swing speed, you must actually work on the mechanics of your golf swing. No new driver is going to help you swing any faster.
To understand how to increase your club head speed, you must first understand where your golf swing speed actually comes from. If you look at my video on the three sources of club head speed above, you know this answer already. If you haven't, click here to watch it now. Your three primary sources to increase your club head speed are:
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Leverage
Width
Rotation
When it comes to increasing your swing speed, these are all of the choices you have to work with. Most golfers I see trying to increase their swing speed focus primarily on rotation. That's because the pundits on TV will have you believe that if you simply spin your shoulders as fast as you can or rotate your hips as fast as you can, you're going to swing the club head faster. However, I have proved time and time again that is not true. In fact, rotating faster actually tends to have the opposite effect on club head speed. That's because you create centripetal force too early in the golf swing. The result of centripetal force is centrifugal force, which actually causes you to throw the club head away and lose lag in the golf swing.
Which brings us to our primary source of club head speed: leverage. Leverage can be thought of in many different ways as it applies to the golf swing. To keep things simple, you should think of your primary source of leverage being the angle between your forearm and club shaft that is made at the wrist joint. This little angle makes up more than two thirds of your club head speed. That's right — 66% of your club head speed comes from the release of your wrist angle. So if you're looking for sources to increase your club head speed, start by looking at your wrist angle first. You can use an AI swing analyzer to see exactly how well you're maintaining lag and when your wrist angle is releasing — all from a single video upload.
Now I've done tons of golf instruction videos on how to increase lag in the golf swing if you haven't seen them. Here's a quick list of just a few of them below:
These golf instruction videos are guaranteed to help you increase your swing lag and, as long as you release that lag at the right time, it will increase your club head speed. How do you release the golf club at the correct time? Great question. Well, as luck would have it, I've done many golf instruction videos on how to release the golf club properly as well. If you haven't seen those, here's a quick list of a few of them below:
As you will learn in these videos, the release is truly a passive motion in a properly sequenced golf swing. You don't really have to do anything in order to get the golf club to release properly as long as you are following sound swing fundamentals. The golf club will actually release for you at the right time without you having to try and time it. This is another critical aspect of not only a great golf swing, but how to increase swing speed in general. You don't want to be trying to time the release of the golf club by actively using your hands. The precise timing required for a proper release is impossible for the human brain to manage consistently — and you no doubt know this because you've struggled by trying to overuse your hands like most amateur golfers do.
Another Source to Increase Swing Speed
So we know that if we want to increase our club head speed we need more leverage, but leverage by itself isn't the only aspect to focus on. The other primary source of club head speed is swing width. Now, to some degree, width is taken care of for you. As you grab a longer golf club, the width of the radius of your golf swing arc increases by default simply because the shaft is longer. This creates more width in your swing, which adds speed. In fact, for every half-inch of shaft length that you increase on your club you pick up about 2 mph of club head speed. That's why your pitching wedge will never be swung as fast as your driver no matter how hard you try. Once again, physics cannot be denied in the golf swing.
However, simply increasing the shaft length of your club is not going to necessarily make you a great ball striker. There is a point of diminishing returns with the driver. At some point, as the shaft gets too long it becomes very difficult to control — and hitting the golf ball long ways into the woods doesn't help with the objective of hitting the golf ball over 300 yards. The driver is simply not designed to be swung on a 50-inch shaft.
So, I want you to think of width in the golf swing a slightly different way. When you think of width, think about making a wide backswing. Now, what good is a wide backswing going to do since we obviously don't hit the golf ball until the downswing? One of the key factors of increasing your swing speed is recruiting enough muscle fiber to help you swing the club fast. While you don't need to be a bodybuilder to hit the golf ball long, you do need to recruit enough muscle fiber to generate enough horsepower to move the golf club fast enough to hit the ball 300 yards. How much? It takes about 32 pounds of muscle to generate 100 mph of club head speed. Most golfers simply don't have that kind of muscle mass available to them in their arms and shoulders — so where do we recruit 32 pounds of muscle?
Great question! We recruit that muscle mass by making a wide turn during the backswing while keeping the club and our arms very wide. By not folding your trail arm early in the backswing — as so many amateur golfers do — it forces your body to rotate more from the core in order to continue moving the club. As you rotate from the midsection rather than relying on your arms and hands, you are recruiting far more muscle fiber than you normally would in your backswing. This is a big part of what using the big muscles to swing the golf club means. Not only will using these muscles help you swing the club head faster, but it will also help you sequence the downswing transition properly. The GOAT Drill system trains exactly this pattern — building the wide, loaded backswing position that elite players use to generate effortless power without overworking the trail arm.
The transition of the golf swing is really the crux of the golf swing for most amateur golfers. The reason they struggle to transition correctly is because they didn't wind up correctly during the backswing. However, by keeping your arms straight and avoiding early wrist cocking, you force yourself to turn properly — and this helps you automatically transition correctly during the downswing.
So if you want to increase your club head speed, you now know exactly how to do it. You need the proper amount of leverage, swing width, and rotation in your golf swing. As you continue to work on these fundamentals using the videos and drills above, you will increase your swing speed. Elite players and the GOAT Model all demonstrate that effortless-looking power comes from correct sequencing — not from swinging harder.
Now, check out this golf instruction video that will give you another secret to increasing your club head speed:
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